Pony Zen

Brenda looked down from the balcony. Across the yard a man dressed in overalls and a green plaid shirt led two naked women from the barn. They wore bridles fitted with bits in their mouths. Reins were attached to them. They wore leather harnesses which were fixed to the rails of a cart. And they had hooves, hooves on their hands and feet. The man climbed into the cart, shook the reins, and the women went off at a slow trot.

"Brenda?"

"Mm? Oh sorry."

"I asked if you had any questions."

"I... I'm not sure."

"Well, it's fairly simple, really. Like all Zen traditions, we acknowledge the four noble truths: Life is suffering, we suffer because of our desires, there is freedom from suffering, and there is a path to follow. But unlike most traditions, this is our path. Pony Zen. By removing the ego, if you will, you are reduced to a pure animal nature. Desire fades as you become truly mindful of this nature. Like most Zen centers, we have a combination of meditation, exercise, and work periods. Unlike most, our practice is stripped of all teaching. No sutras, no chanting, no dokusan. I am not a Zen Master. I'm merely an administrator. I don't teach, I simply provide an experience that allows you to find your true nature, whatever that may be."

"All I will say is that you must focus on being mindful. Mindful of the sights, smells, sounds. Mindful of the food and water. Mindful of your pony nature. Mindful of the milk leaving your breasts each day."

"Milk?"

"Yes. Pony may be a bit inaccurate. It's more like a pony/cow mix. A hybrid if you will. If it was pure pony, you would have preconceptions. Likewise if I had said cow. But this way you become a simple, nameless farm animal. As for the milking, you'll be given hormone injections. They, coupled with the automated milking process will induce lactation. We sell the breast milk. It helps support the farm. The hormones also induce a false pregnancy so you'll no longer have your period and you won't have to worry about becoming actually pregnant."

"Mm."

"Any questions?"

"Yes. I think... what is the actual practice schedule?"

"That will become apparent once you join the others. You said you've been on Zen retreats. It's pretty similar. It's better not to start filling your head with rules and schedules. Our practice is stripped bare and is quite simple, almost intuitive. Just follow the others' lead."

"Are you ready to get started?"

"Yes. It's not exactly what I expected. I thought it was going to be a rural, farm-like experience and that the whole pony thing was something of a metaphor... but yes. I've taken leave from my job, already made the arrangements. So, yes, let's do it."

"Do you have the checks?"

"Yes."

Brenda handed the woman an envelope.

"Good. Fifty-two hundred for room and board and the ten thousand escrow. That check will be held and you'll be vested ten percent per month. If you leave before the year is up, the remaining funds will stay with us. Just a little added incentive to help you focus on your practice."

The woman pressed a button on a plastic box on her desk. A moment later there was a soft knock and the door opened. Another woman, barely more than a girl, dressed as the man was, entered. She and the woman could have been a twins except for the age difference. Probably mother and daughter, Brenda thought.

"17"

The girl nodded. She raised a bit to Brenda's mouth.

"Open your mouth and stick out your tongue," said the woman.

Brenda did so. There was a clam-shaped clamp in the middle of the bit. The girl squeezed it open then applied it to Brenda's tongue.

"Gaa!"

"We have a rule of silence, both among the ponies and with the staff. It will take some time for you to lose the habit of speech. This training bit will help."

The girl fastened the bridle to Brenda's head, attached a lead, and led Brenda out of the room. They went down the hall, through a door, down a flight of steps into the cellar.

The heavy stone walls and floor gave it a forbidding feel. There wasn't much light and there was a musty smell to it.

The girl hitched the lead to a ring in a post and began removing Brenda's clothes. Suddenly embarrassed, Brenda covered herself, but the girl slapped her hands away.

She took a gray tube sock from the work bench, pressed Brenda's left hand into a fist, tugged on the sock. She picked another, a black one, and it took Brenda a second to realize that this one was rubbery. Once in place, the girl turned on a heat gun and applied it to the plastic. It shrank, forcing her hand into an even tighter fist.

The girl measured Brenda's hand, stepped over to a cabinet, and retrieved a hoof. She slipped it over Brenda's hand, up her forearm, zipped it. If anything it was even more snug. The girl took a pair of pliers and snipped off the metal toggle.

The girl repeated the process on Brenda's right hand, then Brenda's left and right foot.

The sensation was like standing in an impossibly high-heel shoe, but without the heel.

The girl led Brenda, staggering, over to cage of sorts. Clopping echoed off the walls. She guided Brenda between two sets of bars, positioned Brenda's head in an oval opening, pulled a lever, and the bars sprang shut, trapping Brenda in a vice-like grip.

She rummaged around in a box, took out something metallic, and fit it to the nozzle of a gas torch. She lit the torch.

Next she opened what looked like a tackle box, removed a syringe, snapped on a fresh needle, took a small vial from a refrigerator, and filled the hypo. She jabbed Brenda in the ass.

"Gaa!"

The girl picked up the torch. The tip glowed red. Brenda could see the letters LI. It took a moment for her brain to register that she was seeing it upside down. Another moment for a wave of fear to wash over her. But by then it was too late. There was a searing pain to her hip, the smell of burnt flesh.

"GAAAA!!!!"

Brenda stood, trapped, taking short, gasping breaths. But the girl wasn't done.

She pulled on a pair of latex gloves, took a swab and swabbed Brenda's nostrils with something tart, medicine smelling. She positioned the ends of the forceps in Brenda's nose, clamped them tight. From the same plastic box she took out a needle and a metal ring. She pressed the tip of the needle to Brenda's septum and pushed. Brenda winced, tears ran down her cheeks. Somehow she managed not to scream, but it hurt. Through blurry eyes she watched the girl use two pair of pliers to close the ring.

The girl wiped Brenda's face, released her from the bars, and hitched the lead to the ring on the post. She stepped over to the wall, pressed a button.

"Done."

Brenda stood, shaking, her mind reeling. Her brain was in denial, but she could feel the weight of the metal on her upper lip. When she looked down there was the LI... 17

Oh God.

There was the sound of footsteps, then the woman was there. She examined the brand and the ring.

"Good. Very good. Now, 17, you should be getting a clear picture of what you signed up for. Don't think about it. Don't rationalize it. Don't analyze it. Just go with it mindfully. This is pure Zen, an arrow driving straight to the heart. Except in our case the arrow is a pony."

She unhitched the lead and exited through a heavy wooded door. Brenda followed, still unsteady on her new hooves.

In the barn there were rows of stalls. They appeared empty until Brenda got closer, then she could see a woman in each, kneeling, sitting back on her haunches, fore-hooves on the floor, facing the back of the stall. Each wore a bridle and bit and a set of reins was attached to a ring on the wall.

As they made their way down the row the woman stopped. A pony in stall 6 was crawling backward to the front of the stall. She rose a bit, squatted, and emptied herself, both piss and shit. She assumed a kneeling position with her arms on the floor and her ass in the air. A groom stepped over and shoveled the mess into a bucket. He pulled a moist towelette from a dispenser and wiped her front and rear. He did that three times. The pony then crawled to the back of the stall and resumed her place, kneeling in the straw, facing the wall. The groom hosed down the spot.

The woman led 17 into an empty stall. She cinched 17's reins to the wall, pushed on her shoulder. 17 knelt, then slowly keeled over onto her side.

"The first night is the hardest. The injection was laced with a sedative. Sleep well."

Brenda woke to the sound of metal hooves on stone. Her own hands and feet felt odd. She thought for a moment that she was dreaming, but when she rolled over there was a stabbing pain in her hip. Brenda became instantly awake, if a bit groggy. She looked down. The number 17 burned into her flesh. It wasn't a dream!

A groom came in, led her out of the stall, cinched her reins to the back of another pony's bridle. The groom worked his way down the row of stalls, hitched each pony to the one before. At the front of the line was a cart, a flimsy looking thing, little more than a pair of bicycle wheels and with a board. From the cart two rails extended and two ponies stood between the rails. They each wore a leather harness, their fore hooves were clipped to the harness and the harness to the rails.

Once the twenty ponies had been set it place, the groom climbed onto the bench seat, flicked his whip, and the ponies set out at a trot. They made their way past a paddock, along the edge of the trees. A path veered into the woods and the groom guided the ponies into it. Another flick of the whip and the ponies accelerated to a canter. Deeper into the woods he drove them into an all-out gallop.

By some miracle, 17 managed not only to keep up, but stay on her hooves. While it still felt awkward walking, running felt like it did when she jogged, up on her toes.

Back at the barn the grooms released the ponies one-by-one. One groom hosed them off, a second toweled them dry, a third led them back to their stalls, a forth fitted the milking machine cups.

The groom smeared something on 17's chest, placed the cups into position. They immediately latched on and drew 17's already large teats deep inside. It felt distinctly uncomfortable, 17 thought, but some part of her brain registered the fact that it would be most welcome when her teats were heavy with milk.

After milking they were fed. A fresh bowl of water and a bowl of what looked and smelled like doggie kibble. The groom removed 17's bit. She leaned forward, lapped up some water, nibbled at the brown bits in the bowl. The groom came in. 17 had barely touched the food. He pointed at the bowl, 17 shook her head, he lashed her once, hard, across the back, fitted the bit in her mouth, and removed the bowl.

17 knelt in meditation through the morning. After lunch she received another lash even though she had managed to eat most of her food. Hunger was overcoming distaste. In the afternoon she was led with another pony to gather hay as she'd seen yesterday. Back in her stall her system kicked in and she worked her way to the opening and squatted. The groom cleaned up the mess and wiped her.

17 cleaned her bowl at dinner.

***

"Thirty days. How's she doing?"

The girl exhaled a plume of blue smoke and handed the joint to her mother.

"Do you mean Web-wise or personally?"

"Personally. Web-wise she's something of a hit."

"The new ones always are. Although, in this case, it's a bit surprising. I mean, she's not much to look at."

"A bridle bit is a great equalizer, cures a multitude of sins."

"So you say. She has a decent body, though. Moves well in her hooves."

"And pairing her with 4 was a good idea. They complement each other."

"Yeah. Personally? She's settled right in. She's cleaning her bowl. Knows how to take a dump. Cooperates with the grooms. Yeah. She's doing okay. Milk production has leveled off. Pretty good actually."

"Okay, time for phase two. Make sure you capture it."

"For Christ sake, Mom, we've got over a hundred frickin' cameras out there. I know my job."

***

The groom unclamped the bit from 17's tongue. He fit a new bit, one without the clamp. It felt odd to move her tongue, having grown used to the clamp.

He led her down the row of stalls to a door. She had no idea what lay behind. When in the barn she knelt facing the rear wall of her stall with the sounds of hooves clopping throughout the day as the grooms led other ponies here and there. Her world consisted solely of her stall, the farmyard, and the wood path.

The groom led 17 into the room. In the middle was a short, wooden pillory. There was another set of stocks on the floor and a wooden rail separated them. He bent 17 over the rail, lifted a board, and positioned 17's neck and wrists in the slots. He lowered and secured the board. He spread 17's ankles and fastened them wide apart into the lower stocks. As she was, 17 could neither stand, nor bend forward, nor adjust her position in any way, bent nearly double at the waist, ass in the air.

***

"She was a virgin?"

"Yeah. Who knew?"

"You-"

"Yes, Mom, I got it. I did a split screen edit and got the look on her face as they plowed into her. Even brought in a hand-held to get a shot of Al's bloody cock and the blood and jizz running down her legs."

"Posted it yet?"

"No. Going to play the time zones. I put up a couple of teasers. Plan to update at around ten our time, that'll be seven on the left coast."

"We're not going to have server issues, are we?"

"Uh uh. We can handle the load. But I'll double check just to be sure and I'll babysit while it happens. Probably make a boatload of money. You know, we'd make more if-"

"Don't go there, Kate."

"But we get a lot and I mean a LOT of e-mail."

"Yes, and we get nut jobs asking us to slaughter them and we're not doing that, either. Besides, breeding them isn't all it's cracked up to be. Birth is messy. And, it would cut into our production time."

"Yeah, but pregnant ponies..."

"No. We're already censored in some countries. Now you want to bring children into it? Listen, they're all nicely conditioned into this pony thing. You bring kids into the picture and it'll change the whole dynamic."

"Yeah, yeah, okay."

***

In her stall 17 knelt. She was mindful of the smell of the straw, of the feel of it beneath her knees. She was mindful of the hoof falls as ponies went about their day. She was mindful of the strange, dull ache between her legs. She was mindful...

 

23.09.13